


100% That Guy

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29264172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: Jeremy doesn'tmeanto be That Guy, but he is 100% That Guy.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	100% That Guy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [innie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/gifts).



> For innie_darling, based on [**this comment thread**](https://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/1256456.html?thread=10801416#cmt10801416). Thanks to Nichole for reading it over.

"Dan, you've got two minutes on the Knicks in the six block," Dana says.

"Two minutes too many," Dan mutters. He and Casey low-five under the table, as if that means Dana can't see them. Jeremy's only been with _Sports Night_ for a few weeks and even he knows Dana can see _everything_.

"Is that my mug?" Dana says, whirling and pointing her pencil at Jeremy.

Jeremy looks at the mug in his hand and then back at Dana. "Uh, I don't know?"

"It is! It _is_ my mug, Jeremy."

"Okay."

"I realize you've only been with us a few weeks, so maybe you don't know how I know it's my mug. Do you know how I know it's my mug, Jeremy?"

"Uh. No?" He doesn't mean for it to sound like a question 

"Look at the bottom."

"What?"

"Look at the bottom of the mug, Jeremy."

"The mug is full of coffee," Jeremy says. "I don't think you want me to spill it."

Dana huffs, making her hair flutter. "When you take it back to the pantry to wash it—which you are going to do, and quite thoroughly, I might add—check the bottom. You'll find a Crate and Barrel logo. That's how you'll know it's my mug."

Jeremy catches Casey's eye, and Casey shakes his head almost imperceptibly. Jeremy's not sure what Casey is trying to tell him, so he settles for saying, "Okay," but he knows that even though he has good intentions right now, he's never going to do that. 

"Now, where were we?"

"The Knicks. Two minutes," he offers helpfully, earning a glare from Dan. Luckily, the power of Dan's glare is relatively anemic compared to Dana's and Natalie's, so Jeremy ignores it. He's just glad to have redirected Dana's ire elsewhere.

"Two minutes is _so long_ ," Dan whines. 

"That explains _so much_ about you," Natalie says.

"Hey!" Dan crumples up a sheet of paper and throws it at Natalie, who sticks her tongue out at him.

"She's got a point," Dana says, ignoring their shenanigans.

"Two minutes about the Knicks is an eternity," Dan replies. "It's just science. Relativity. Perception. It will seem like an eternity."

"But it will only _actually_ be two minutes, so suck it up, Dan."

The meeting moves on to an argument about the offensive pass interference call during the Monday night game that gave the Chargers the win over the Broncos, and Jeremy completely forgets that he's using Dana's mug. He leaves it in the sink, and doesn't think about it again.

*

It happens two or three times over the next month, because Jeremy never ever looks at the bottom of a mug before he takes it out of the cabinet. It's a white porcelain mug made for being filled with coffee and he is a man in desperate need of caffeine. 

Dana is nattering on about meeting Alexander Ovechkin at some restaurant Jeremy has never heard of and he tunes her out, his brain focused on the stats he needs for the forty-five seconds in the five block about the Jets, when she says, "Jeremy! Why are you using my mug again?"

Jeremy wrenches his brain away from the Jets' perennial woefulness and nearly spills the contents of his, no, _Dana's_ mug all down his white shirt. "What?"

"My mug, Jeremy. That I specifically asked you not to use! You are using it!"

"Uh, I'm sorry?"

"I don't think you are, Jeremy."

"You're right," he replies. "I'm not."

"You never use Dan's mug, or Casey's," she continues. She taps her pencil on the conference room table and then points it at him. Jeremy can practically see the _J'Accuse!_ banner emanating from it in some fancy, old-timey script. 

Dan and Casey clutch their respective mugs closer. Dan's bears the logo of the now-defunct Hartford Whalers, which Jeremy thinks is cool but not that cool, and Casey's says "#1 Dad" in cartoony letters. It was a gift from Charlie for Father's Day last year. Jeremy would never use Casey's "#1 Dad" mug. He doesn't say that, though. Dana wouldn't take it well. Or, she would take it even less well than she's taking things now.

"They keep their mugs in their office," he says after the silence goes on slightly too long.

"So you respect their boundaries, but not mine. I see how it is."

"Yes. I mean, no. I totally respect you, Dana, and your boundaries," Jeremy replies, scrambling to assure her that he is not That Guy. Or, he doesn't _mean_ to be That Guy. "I just—Your mug looks like every other mug in the cabinet, Dana." 

Dana nods. "It may _look_ the same, but does it _feel_ the same, Jeremy? It does not. It has more heft, and a more ergonomic handle. You must feel it, or you wouldn't keep using it."

"Okay," Jeremy says, despite the fact that he has never noticed any of that. "Maybe you should put your name on it."

"If that's how you want it to be, Jeremy, I'm happy to do that." She turns to Natalie. "Natalie, label all the mugs. Make sure the label on mine is highly visible."

Natalie says, "Yes, boss," in a false, bright tone before shooting a deathly glare at Jeremy. He's definitely going to be hearing about this for the rest of the night.

*

The next day, all the mugs in the pantry are labeled "Not Dana's." Jeremy had heard all about how Natalie programmed the label-maker to print multiple copies of the same text, and how she varied it on some by using underline or all caps. He'd also heard about how she hadn't accumulated thousands of dollars in college debt "just to label mugs, Jeremy! You owe me!"

Jeremy had very much enjoyed paying her back that night in bed, and he enjoys remembering it now.

He shuffles back to his desk and takes a sip of his coffee and it's perfect—hot, but not hot enough to burn his tongue, black with two sugars, and not burnt the way it gets later in the day when everyone forgets to turn the burner off. It's not until he's halfway through drinking it that he notices that the mug is labeled "DANA'S MUG" in stark, black, one-inch high capital letters. He thinks about dumping it and getting a new mug, and then gets distracted by a story on Deadspin about the Knicks' new starting forward, his agent, a poodle, and a stripper named Brandi, with an "i."

Later, as he washes out Dana's mug and places it in the draining rack, Jeremy resigns himself to the fact that he is one hundred percent That Guy, and he's going to have to learn to accept it.


End file.
